Quarantine

by Sherri Fulmer Moorer

  She heard the lady open a drawer and flip through some pages. “It was one of the large national banks. The gentleman called from a branch in Columbia. In fact, I had to E-mail the information to Mr. Harris so he could see if it was his money. It was such a large amount that I kept a copy of it on file, just in case there were more questions about it. Yes, right here it is. I’m glad I kept it.”

  Caitlyn sat down at Lana’s desk. “Could you E-mail that to me?”

  “It’s on the way,” the lady said as Caitlyn’s phone chimed.

  Caitlyn opened the attachment and scanned over it, the sinking feeling in her stomach returning. “Thanks. This is exactly what I need.”

  Chapter 10 ( 1:55 P.M.)

  Caitlyn stood in front of the restroom mirror, patting down her clothes with a bunch of damp paper towels. She was dirty and her nose was runny; – no doubt thanks to the same thing that had embedded in her clothes. She swore off any more trips through the ceiling.

  She dropped the towels and sighed, studying herself in the mirror. She still couldn’t believe it. She pulled out her phone to look over the documents one more time, but nothing changed. They had been hoodwinked, plain and simple. She didn’t know what shocked her more: That they pulled it off right under everybody’s nose, or that it went on for so long. She combed her fingers through her hair and straightened up, steeling herself for what to do next. She had to go to Megan with this and maybe Officer Richards as well. She would probably get in trouble for not turning in her phone, but what she had gained was more valuable than any price she’d have to pay for that small indiscretion.

  Caitlyn was about to leave the restroom when her phone vibrated. Pulling it out, she saw it was a message from Shelly, titled Urgent! It read:

  Caitlyn – I’m sorry to take a while to get back to you. The preliminary results are in for the autopsy, and I just managed to break away from the police and environmental folks. Mrs. Ross died from complications with asthma and bacterial-based pneumonia. We compared the bacteria to the others that have been admitted, and it’s the same. Since bacterial illnesses aren’t contagious, this isn’t a threat to the overall community. However, it’s unlikely that such a widespread appearance of this illness is random. All of the ill staff members for Woodland Memorial are on antibiotics for the same bacterial-based pneumonia. Based on this, we can conclude that somehow the bacterium was purposely introduced to your environment.

  There are two common elements here that scare me: First, the bacterial infection that your staff has is consistent with the vial of pneumonia stolen from the research lab. Thankfully, the thief only stole one of three vials, so we have something to compare our samples to for verification purposes. Second, the vial went missing the night before flu shots were administered to your staff, and everybody that got a shot is now ill. We speculate that the stolen vial was used to taint the flu vaccine. The stolen vial of pneumonia was taken as a live sample from a patient ten days ago. That patient is the only person from the general population to have this form of pneumonia – it progressed in him from a case of bronchitis that was not completely treated by his antibiotics. The patient gave us permission to take a live sample because his pneumonia was penicillin resistant, and we were testing it to see if it responded to a new class of antibiotics our lab has in the developmental stage. All of the other cases of this pneumonia were amongst YOUR staff members that had those flu shots, and we confirmed that it’s the same bacteria base that he had from the vials that weren’t stolen. No other cases have been reported outside Woodland Memorial’s staff. Since we are the only medical complex in Woodland that pretty much covers our whole population.

  All of the staff that worked the night the vial was stolen has credible witnesses and alibis except Lori Selters, one of our nurses that routinely work the night shift. Unfortunately, she’s the nurse that gave your staff their flu shots the next morning. We aren’t sure why she traded shifts with the nurse assigned to your staff that day, but Mr. Harris authorized it so she worked overtime while another lucky nurse got an unexpected day off. She was on duty for a twelve hour shift that night and stayed another six hours, but nobody was able to verify seeing her between 6:00 A.M. and when she arrived at your officer to give the shots at 8:00 A.M. She said she was at the hospital during that time, but nobody recalls seeing her on her assigned floor during that time. Now we can’t find her, or the vials of flu vaccine used on your staff. She filled out a report claiming they were all used and the bottles were properly discarded. Lori was assigned to work last night, but hasn’t been seen since 4:30 A.M., right after she signed Mrs. Ross’s death certificate. She didn’t clock out this morning when her shift ended, her car is still in the parking lot, and we’ve searched the hospital with no success. The last person to see her was a custodian taking out trash shortly before 4:00 this morning. He claimed he saw her talking to a person in a long coat.

  The quarantine is remaining in effect until we can locate Lori and Mr. Harris. The police got a warrant to search Lori’s house, and they just sent two officers over there. Her disappearance is suspicious under these circumstances, especially with Mr. Harris missing as well. If she isn’t directly involved with this, she must know something about it – why else would she run? So now we’re being held for our own protection.

  Please be careful! I have a bad feeling about this. Plus, there have been nasty rumors that auditors were called to your office because they suspect the grant money for the research lab is being mismanaged. Now some of the staff are joking about Mr. Harris trying to bump you all off so he can run away with a lot of money. Do you know anything about this? We may have a bigger drama on our hands than we imagined.

  I hope this helps. Good luck!

  Shelly

  Caitlyn barely had time to finish reading the message when somebody started pounding on the door.

  “Caitlyn, get out!” Mandy yelled through the locked door. “I know you’re in there!”

  Caitlyn hit the standby button on her phone and stuck it in her sweater pocket.

  “I’m indisposed!” she shouted.

  “Unlock this door! I’ll break it down!”

  “I said wait a minute!” Caitlyn shouted, looking around. She wondered if she could open the ventilation window wide enough to crawl out. It would be a heck of a drop to the ground, but she might make it without hurting herself. She climbed on top of the sink and pulled with all of her might, but it would only crack open about two inches. Just then the frame of the door around the lock splintered as a bullet blew through the wood and lodged in the wall across from the door. Two more bullets followed, and the doorknob buckled as Mandy kicked it.

  “Holy God!” Caitlyn exclaimed, jumping to the ground. She looked for anything she might be able to use as a weapon as Mandy kicked the door open.

  “You’re better at hiding than I am,” Mandy sneered, leveling a gun at Caitlyn’s head. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “I don’t think so,” Caitlyn said, grabbing the large ‘Wet Floor’ sign from the corner and swinging it at Mandy’s head. Mandy raised her hands to block, but was too late. The sign hit her squarely in the head, pushing her into the tile wall and knocking her out. Picking up the gun, Caitlyn dropped the magazine out, pulled out the bullets, and dropped the bullets in her sweater pocket. She snapped the magazine back on the gun, threw it out of the ventilation window, and burst out of the bathroom door.

  Chapter 11 (2:15 P.M.)

  Caitlyn was in panic as she raced around the hall. She always wondered if Mandy was hiding an aggressive streak behind her meek demeanor, but she never imagined Mandy would be bold enough to shoot somebody. That quiet personality certainly was an act.

  Caitlyn found Megan, Elly, and Officer Richards in the conference room, duct taped to chairs. She pulled the tape off their mouths and quickly set to freeing them as they explained what happened. Shortly after Caitlyn took off for Mrs. Ross’s office, Mandy vanished. Megan and Elly searched the office and saw no sign of her. They went
to ask Officer Richards for help, but they found an empty lobby and a broken vase. They split up in an effort to find Mandy faster, but she attacked each of them alone and bound them to chairs with duct tape from the supply room. Once she rounded the three of them up, she shredded the paperwork from Mrs. Ross’s office, and went looking for Caitlyn.

  “She’ll probably be back,” Megan said. “She may be disarmed for now, but she’s still dangerous. Who knows what else she managed to pick up during her disappearance. We better get out of here. I’d rather have the cops running after us for breaking quarantine than her trying to kill us!”

  They ran up the hall toward the lobby. Elly quickly disarmed the alarm system, and triumphantly pulled on the doorknob.

  Nothing happened. She strained as she tugged at the door, but it wouldn’t open.

  “Why won’t it open?” Elly shouted.

  “Let me try,” Caitlyn said, pulling on the door. “She’s right.” She turned to Officer Richards. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing!” He said. “I locked the door and had Elly set the alarm system. When my colleagues left, I had her disarm it long enough for them to walk out, and then reset it.” He pulled on the door as well, as they looked out the window to see if they could find what was blocking it. There was no visible sign of anything blocking the door, but it still wouldn’t budge. He turned back toward them. “Ok, let’s head for the back door. I agree; we’d be safer breaking quarantine than staying here.” They dashed around the corner when Caitlyn suddenly stopped. They ran into each other as she studied the corner office intently.

  “What’s wrong?” Elly asked.

  Caitlyn pointed to the door. “Mrs. Ross’s office is open. It’s been closed and locked while she’s been out this week. Who opened it?”

  They all looked around.

  Caitlyn looked around the hall suspiciously. “It was closed when I got the files out a few hours ago.” She turned and looked at the others, who were looking back at her in wide-eyed horror. “Who did this?”

  She felt a gun poking in the back of her head. “Hello darling,” a woman said in a thick, country accent. She turned to find a woman in a nurse uniform, with graying hair pulled in a sloppy bun and dull blue eyes flashing triumphantly. Lori Selters had walked up behind her.

  “The tunnels,” Megan said. “They do exist, and they come out …”

  “Right under that desk,” Lori said pointing toward the piece of laminate flooring that had been pulled up under Mrs. Ross’s desk. She turned Caitlyn toward the hall and stuck the gun in her back. “Come on, let’s go to the lobby.”

  Chapter 12 ( 2:50 P.M.)

  Mandy stumbled into the lobby, rubbing her head. “What happened?”

  “You tell me,” Lori snarled. “How did you manage to screw this up?”

  Mandy pointed at Caitlyn. “She hit me.”

  “I sure did, and I’ll do it again.”

  “Quiet!” Lori shouted. “You’re interfered enough and it’s time to end this.”

  “Oh give me a break,” Megan said. “What did we do, besides make the mistake of coming in to work this morning?”

  “That’s just it. You weren’t supposed to be here by today,” Lori said, pacing the floor. “We had it planned out perfectly. An outbreak of pneumonia would have the whole staff sick for at least a week. That would keep the auditors out long enough for us to take the money and run. But the doctors got worried because a lot of people had the same thing. Instead of letting it go and minding their own business, they called the Health Department.” She sighed bitterly. “Before I knew it somebody had died and everybody knew about the missing specimens from the research lab.”

  “What are you talking about?” Elly asked.

  “She’s talking about this,” Caitlyn said, pulling out her phone and displaying the document from the bank. “Megan and I were right. Mr. Harris was stealing money from the grant. Since we got several million dollars from it, nobody noticed until one of our vendors got tired of issuing refunds to us every month when they reconciled their records. They called the federal grant administrators last month and asked them to send auditors over here to help us get our records straight.”

  Officer Richards shook his head. “How did you manage to swindle money out of a small hospital like Woodland Memorial, even with a multi-million dollar grant?”

  “Modifying the records,” Caitlyn said, punching at her phone screen. “You shut down our connection, but the main server is in the basement of the hospital and that’s still running. We can access the Intranet externally with our usernames and passwords. That’s why I was gone so long. When I got the records from the bank, I went back in the database.” She turned the phone and pointed to several red columns that were highlighted. “Mrs. Ross was trying to reconcile our records in preparation for the auditors and discovered numerous overpayments.” Caitlyn swiped her finger on the screen, scrolling down to the bottom columns where several notations were made in bold blue. “It looks like she started calling the vendors last week to ask about the overpayments, and they all claimed to have sent us refunds. Unfortunately, she got sick before the information came in.” Caitlyn smiled. “Fortunately, I have her username and password, so I was able to get into her E-mails and see the copies of the cleared checks that the vendors E-mailed her this week.” She pointed to Mandy. “She modified the invoices to show that we owed money on things that weren’t delivered. When the vendors issued refund checks, she intercepted them and deposited the money in a bank in Columbia. The deposits are in her handwriting.”

  Mandy smiled. “I’d love to see you prove it.”

  Caitlyn pecked at her phone, pulling up more documents. “I just had an interesting conversation with the gentleman at the bank that handles this account. He said Mr. Harris came in two years ago to open an account for the hospital. He told them he didn’t trust the small banks in Woodland to handle such large sums of money and wanted the security of a better established institute.”

  “So?” Lori sneered. “That proves nothing.”

  Caitlyn smiled and turned the phone toward them. “This does.”

  They leaned in to study the screen. Mandy shrieked and tried to grab the phone, but Caitlyn pulled it away and handed it to Officer Richards. “As you can see, he was kind enough to E-mail me the documentation to authorize the account. It shows that Mr. Harris opened the account. The only other person authorized to make transactions on that account was his daughter, Mandy Murray.”

  Elly gasped. “You’re his daughter? I should have known!” She paused. “Wait, he told me he knew your mother. So that means …”

  “I’m her mother, stupid,” Lori said, “We were having an affair.”

  “How do you two have different last names?” Megan asked.

  “I moved to Columbia after Mandy was born and married somebody else. I took his name, but he never formally adopted Mandy so she has my maiden name. My husband died a couple of years ago. When I found out that Mr. Harris’s wife had passed away, I contacted him. He was so lonely and grief stricken that he would do anything to fill the void of her loss and the grief over our affair.” She smiled. “The grant was just a bonus; a little something we saw as an opportunity to get away from here for once and for all,” she raised the gun, “and you’re meddling won’t stop us.”

  Chapter 13 ( 3:30 P.M.)

  “First things first,” Lori said, pointing the gun at Caitlyn. “Hand over the phone.”

  “Forget it. You shoot me and it’s all over.”

  “I’m going to shoot all of you!” Lori screamed.

  “Really?” Megan asked. “How are you going to explain how you and Mandy got out? You’re fingerprints are all over the gun!”

  “It doesn’t matter! We’ll be on an airplane to anywhere but here in an hour! By the time they figure it out, we’ll be long gone.”

  “Lori, where’s the stolen vial from the hospital?” Caitlyn asked.

  Lori’s eyes squinted in confusion behind the gun.
“What?”

  “The vial of pneumonia you stole from the lab,” Caitlyn said. “Where is it?”

  “You have a gun to your head. You’re not in a position to ask questions.”

  Caitlyn rolled her eyes. “I’ve lost count of how many times it’s been to my head the past hour. It’s lost its effect. Where is it?”

  “I’m not stupid. I destroyed it.”

  “Where did you get that gun?”

  “I’ve had it with you!” Lori said, pressing the gun to Caitlyn’s head and pulling the trigger. Nothing happened. She tried it again and all they heard was a hollow click.

  “Because if you found it outside,” Caitlyn said, reaching in her pocket and pulling out the bullets, “it works better with these.”

  Lori looked at Mandy, eyes wide with shock. “We talked about this in the tunnel when we met a few hours ago. You were supposed to leave it out there for me fully loaded!”

  Mandy pointed at Caitlyn. “She was locked in the bathroom. I had to shoot out the doorknob and kick in the door. Then she knocked me out!”

  “You sneaky little wretch!” she yelled, lunging at Caitlyn.

  Caitlyn ducked as Lori hit the wall, knocking the chair railing loose. Lori screamed and came after her again, but Megan tackled her as Caitlyn yanked the chair railing the rest of the way off the wall and hit Lori in the head as hard as she could. Lori fell to the floor as Mandy leaped after them both. To everybody’s surprise, Elly grabbed a lead crystal paperweight from the receptionist desk and threw it at Mandy. She lurched as it hit her in the head and knocked her to the floor.

  Officer Richards stood over Lori and Mandy, smiling. “Ladies, you’re under arrest.”

  Chapter 14 ( 3:45 P.M.)

  “You still can’t prove anything!” Lori shouted from the chair in the lobby she was handcuffed to. “My name isn’t on anything!”